Pinatar Pirates Cricket Club win the Super cup
Fresh from their successful warm up tour to Malaga, the Pinatar Pirates Cricket Club entered “Team Pinatar” into a T20 tournament being hosted at their home ground at the Pinatar Arena sports complex at San Pedro del Pinatar.
The NACC (National Asian Cricket Council) bought young talented players from all over the UK to the tournament, and with the newly formed Alicante Star also joining in, it was going to be a mouth-watering contest.
Competitive T20 games were played in the group stages from Friday 31st march through to Sunday morning, 02nd April, the cricket was complemented by the weather, and it was excellent. The home side just had the edge in the closely contested games with the NACC and maintained their unbeaten run on the way to the final where they would face the team that finished in second place, the team from the UK.
Both teams had played each other several times and therefore the games were becoming very tactical, but played in a fantastic sporting and friendly sprit all the way through.
Batting first in the final the NACC made a shaky start losing 3 early wickets, but solid batting from Asim (50) and Zahoor the bowler of the tournament and very useful bat (30), putting on a stand of 72 runs helped steady the ship posting a decent target of 149 from their 20 overs. In the field they knew from the previous matches that they needed early wickets to make it difficult for team Pinatar. However Lovejit Singh finally found the form that was missing in the earlier matches and scored a fantastic and aggressive 38, and when he departed, the batsman of the tournament, Kuldeep Lal (68No) demonstrated just why there was no question of him picking up this award as he tore into the NACC attack. With the Pinatar top guns firing on all cylinders, they reached the target with ease in 13 overs and in doing so became the first team to have its name on the enormous “Pinatar Arena T20 Supercup” sponsored by SJ&A Graphics Torrevieja, Flavours restaurant group and Bar Ricos in Torrevieja Park of Nations.
The teams and spectators enjoyed a wonderful gala dinner/presentation evening at the Pinatar Arena, here the Pinatar Pirates Cricket Club thanked the team organisers Nadeem (Alicante Stars), Gulfran Raiz (NACC) and George Wambeek (Pinatar Pirates) for getting the players together. Likewise, a big thank you was given to the tournament officials without whom nothing would be possible, Gordon Ashford, Maz Mahmood, Harmit Phull, Bill Gaynor and David Riley.
It was a fantastic 3 days of entertaining cricket enjoyed by all, thanks to the Pinatar Arena and all its staff for making everyone feel so welcome and doing an outstanding job as hosts.
